Quote:
One thing is, the poultry industry cares a whole big lot more about *sublethal* diseases than, on average, backyard hobbyists.
The poultry industry operates on a thin enough margin that even a small percentagewise drop in laying (or in egg quality) can mean the difference between hanging in there vs financial disaster. Whereas most of us, if our birds contract something and they're not quite right for a while and then either get better or 'sorta' get better but never lay quite the same again, it's no big deal.
I think it is 1000% fair to say, as Cyn does, that industrial-scale chicken farming is its own worst enemy on a multitude of counts; but the fact that their system is pretty fragile makes them (obviously!) even more worried about sources of disease and disaster. You'd probably feel the same way if your livelihood, including all your savings and real estate dollars, were tied up in an egg or broiler farm.
Rather than try to point fingers at who is a "bigger" threat to whom, I think it is probably fairest to say that backyarders and industry are *different kinds of* threat to each other.
And unfortunately that is probably IMO the way it will always always stay, until and unless the population at large clues in that food is not supposed to be dirt-cheap and meat does not have to be eaten in such large amounts.
JMHO,
Pat
One thing is, the poultry industry cares a whole big lot more about *sublethal* diseases than, on average, backyard hobbyists.
The poultry industry operates on a thin enough margin that even a small percentagewise drop in laying (or in egg quality) can mean the difference between hanging in there vs financial disaster. Whereas most of us, if our birds contract something and they're not quite right for a while and then either get better or 'sorta' get better but never lay quite the same again, it's no big deal.
I think it is 1000% fair to say, as Cyn does, that industrial-scale chicken farming is its own worst enemy on a multitude of counts; but the fact that their system is pretty fragile makes them (obviously!) even more worried about sources of disease and disaster. You'd probably feel the same way if your livelihood, including all your savings and real estate dollars, were tied up in an egg or broiler farm.
Rather than try to point fingers at who is a "bigger" threat to whom, I think it is probably fairest to say that backyarders and industry are *different kinds of* threat to each other.
And unfortunately that is probably IMO the way it will always always stay, until and unless the population at large clues in that food is not supposed to be dirt-cheap and meat does not have to be eaten in such large amounts.
JMHO,
Pat
